


Monody in Autumn Eternal

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dogs, Gen, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2798081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>inspired by art created by tumblr user xfreischutz, blackwall adopts mabaris. or they adopt him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monody in Autumn Eternal

They’d been born at Haven.  Blackwall had watched the littermates for months, prowling the perimeter but never straying far from the main camp.  He’d fed them druffalo steaks once, when they allowed him close enough.  
  
Master Dennett stopped climbing to catch his breath, leaning heavily on a long scrap of pine he’d been using as a walking stick.  He followed Blackwall’s gaze, down the jagged map of footpaths the refugees had stamped into the mountain snow.  He said, “They belonged to the young master, the noble boy with the keen eye for horseflesh.”  
  
“But they didn’t stay behind with him.”  
  
“I suppose they were too young.”  
  
Old enough for the collar, too young for the paint.  What of their mother?  Felled by the blade of some red monster, probably.  
  
The female sat, waiting for her brother who had lagged far behind in the steep climb.  He was so small at that distance that Blackwall was sure he’d be lost, night would come before he caught up, but she waited.    
  
Dennett moved on, wheezing a little, and Blackwall took up the rear of the party.  The Herald was defeated, and likely the whole sodding enterprise along with her, but the Inquisition marched up and up toward steadier ground where they could camp.  Some mythical sanctuary waited for them, less hopeful than a dog in the snow.  Several times during the climb he checked over his shoulder, searching for the steadfast mabari female, until her peaked ears disappeared below the path that the Inquisition had carved.  
  
***  
  
Three days later they crossed the high, half-mile bridge together.    
  
Horns bellowed from the watchtower, and Blackwall hurried to the gate, kicking up storms of crimson leaves as he went.  Though the new residents of Skyhold had a hundred more important tasks to complete they gathered to watch a pair of hunger-wrecked dogs return to a place they’d never been. Young soldiers welcomed to an uncertain home.  
  
Behind him, Varric said, “Shit. Never seen anything like it.”  
  
“Neither have I.” Blackwall shielded his eyes from the sun-glint as the mabaris broke into a trot. “Can’t help feeling a bit. . .”  
  
“Inspired? Renewed?” Varric chuckled and rubbed his jaw.   
  
“Yeah.”  
  
 _Scared_ , he’d have said in other company, _for them_.  
  
As they came under the shadow of the Keep, Blackwall knelt to receive the two dogs.  They were little but filth and bone but otherwise whole. Trembling, they licked his face, one on either side.  
  
He’d have liked to have a poetic mind just then, to distill that heartbreak, that trust and acceptance, into words.  As it was, he had only Varric.  
  
“Well, hero, you’ve got trouble now.”  
  
***  
He didn’t have to teach them to fight, how to evade, to howl, or to overwhelm. Those skills were inborn, old as blood and just as vibrant, pure as their desire to protect the family Skyhold had provided them.   
  
She was powerful, watchful, and quiet. Cole called her a soft sentinel and he stood very still while she sniffed him all over. The stub of her tail wagged when she saw him, and she always saw him.  
  
Her brother was rambunctious, curious, and quick to engage. Iron Bull sent him chasing after sticks the size of dwarves, and hid treats all around the Keep for him to find. _Sharpen that mind_ , he said.  
  
Before and above anyone in the castle, even the Herald herself, they attached themselves to Blackwall.  Big as they’d grown they still whined when he left, leapt when he returned, and stayed so close as to resemble well-muscled bookends while he slept. And neither dog seemed to mind when he woke from nightmares to bury his face in their rough coats, breathing calmly as he murmured sounds they doubtless did not understand.  
  
The mabaris liked to patrol the yard while Blackwall chopped wood, and after a few weeks, when Cassandra began to join him, they liked her as well.  Warriors of every ilk, he supposed, shared an appreciation for exercise and ritual beyond combat. The Seeker still had prayers, though, and he’d all but forgotten those.  Lumber work filled the restless gaps.  
  
Cassandra cut her eyes from the balanced log awaiting her axe to the mabari circling, casual but close.  She smiled.  
  
“They appear to have taken to you. Do the Wardens recruit mabari?”  
  
“Eh, not that I’ve seen.” Blackwall settled his axe and eased himself down beside the well to watch Cassandra’s swing. Her control had improved over the weeks. The dogs broke off from their rounds to join him, expecting water.  He was not too exhausted to scratch their ears, and let them lick his sweat-salted neck. “That’s not a bad idea, though. There are few creatures, man or otherwise, who show such loyalty, strength, and courage.”  
  
The bucket sloshed as he brought it up, and they waited to drink after him.  
  
“Then they are as intelligent as I’ve been told, to have chosen you,” Cassandra said, leaning on her axe, squinting in the sun to regard all three of them. “I could say that you embody those qualities as well.”  
  
He poured the remaining water over his head, which he shook ruefully.  Droplets flew.  The dogs shivered their coats on reflex and bounded away, streaks of brown under a fall of yellow aspen leaves.  
  
“No,” he said softly to the damp ground between his feet. “Not even close.”  
  
***  
The world didn’t end, and he didn’t even have to give his life to see it done.  Part of him, the stubborn and bitter remnant of Rainier, was less grateful for that bit of luck.    
  
His survival seemed a poor twist of fate, until their contingent rolled across the half-mile bridge and his mabaris knocked him flat on his back for the sheer joy of his return. His mabaris knew nothing of fate the way Skyhold knew no color but endless sunset. And they demanded _life_ from him, a less selfish life.  
  
The pain and the sorrow thus concluded, the triumph and the revelry thus enjoyed, his fate came calling for him. As decreed.    
  
Blackwall hadn’t expected the specific Warden who was sent to collect him, though.  The Inquisition maintained its alliances, and its friendships, down to the man. Truthfully, it was something of an honor, a piece of history repeating.  
  
As he loaded the outbound wagon with what little he owned, Warden Theirin stood alongside him to help.  Alistair, he asked to be called. The dogs grumbled and paced, anxious among the unfamiliar scents of the Grey entourage and Blackwall’s own confusing cloud of apprehension.  
  
Alistair explained what it had been like for him, following a noble man into troubled times, finding himself truly committed only when he appeared to have lost everything.  He pushed a set of shields, wrapped in supple leather, between Blackwall’s trunk and the buckboard.  
  
“A good partner can do that for you, I suppose,” Alistair said. “She could have said to the Void with the whole thing, but, still, we did it. It’s amazing how much we sort of made up as we went along.”  
  
He chewed his thumbnail, pensive furrows appearing between his brows. “I should stop telling people that.”  
  
“Your secret is safe with me,” assured Blackwall, drawing up short of a smile. “There are worse crimes than making the best of a bad situation.”  
  
The two mabaris followed the attendant Warden mage as she tried to meet with the Inquisitor on the main steps. They sniffed and herded her all the way.  Alistair leaned against the wagon, tilting his chin toward the dogs.  
  
“They’re welcome to come, too,” he said. “We had a mabari, almost twenty years old by the end. Loved eating my dirty socks almost as much as tearing into a bandit’s backside.  Looking at yours, I doubt we’d be able to stop them following you even if we wanted to.”  
  
No force yet devised could separate them, in fact. Not the pledge of a noose, nor a darkspawn magister, nor the Fade gone batty.  Even his worst self, made better, had to concede their indomitability.  They’d grown so well, so strong, and not so far from their dark beginning. Blackwall nodded, humbled by a firm tug in his chest, sweeter than gratitude.  
  
“My thanks.  They’ll be no trouble. Well, not much.” He whistled sharply, and the sound echoed upward against Skyhold’s ramparts. His voice was loud in the unusually empty yard as he called, “ _Élise_. _René_. Come by.”  
  
The mabaris quit their post by the poor mage and jogged down to sit at Blackwall’s feet, awaiting new orders.  They looked expectantly from one man to the other.  
  
“Fereldan dogs with Orlesian names?” Alistair crossed his arms. “I hope that’s not your idea of a joke.”  
  
“Far from it,” replied Blackwall. He knelt, rubbing their broad, fierce faces between his hands, and pressed his forehead to theirs. “More like a promise.”


End file.
